1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for mapping connections from a port on a switching card to a pin on a frame at a central office of a telecommunications system, or for mapping a pin on a frame to an outside plant feeder.
2. Related Art
To provide services to their customers, telecommunications companies (telcos) maintain a system of wire and fiberoptic land lines connecting their central offices (COs), at which switching cards are located, with their subscribers. This is true whether the service is telephone service, broadband Internet access, such as, for example, DSL or optical cable, or other broadband services, such as, for example, video-conferencing and land line delivery of television programming.
The path between a subscriber's address and a CO includes several stages, such as a drop connecting the address to a serving terminal; a distribution connecting the serving terminal to a cross-box; and a feeder connecting the cross-box with the CO. The feeder enters the CO by connecting to a pin on a frame, which is connected to a port on a switching card by a jumper, either directly or through one or more intermediate pins and jumpers. The frame itself is a physical structure located within the CO, laid out in a matrix of blocks, each of which includes a matrix of pins.
A pin in a frame is identified by a coordinate system based upon the physical location of the pin on the frame. However, due to the enormous number of frames, and the number of pins on each frame, the mapping of ports to pins on a frame and pins on the frame to feeders has up to now been a relatively complex undertaking, one that must be performed by specially trained personnel, assisted by specialized software running on a mainframe computer. Moreover, because such existing computer systems are text-based, they do not offer the user the ability to readily visualize the frame in relation to the incoming and outgoing lines, and are therefore not optimal for the mapping functions to which they are directed.
Thus, the need exists for a system that allows a user to visualize the frame and lines connected thereto more easily, thus making mapping easier. There also is a need for a system that can access a database of a telco's resources to assist in controlling the growth and maintenance of frames in CO's.